Varg In Jeep's Clothing

You just get a picture on the box. Like a jigsaw puzzle.

 

yeah and instructions in Swedish

 

Shifter mount for the t-case.

I chopped the shifter tower off an old D18 and whipped up a mount that bolts to the transmission.

I need to pick up some 5/16” rod end ball joints.

 

Is it hard to weld steel to what looks like cast iron?

 

No, I just try to follow two rules: get as much surface area as possible to weld, and preheat the cast iron to blue-hot and post-heat the part to bring it down to room temp slowly.

Cast iron crystallizes along the edge of the weld. If it’s going to fail, it will crack all along the edge between the steel filler and the cast iron. Pre/post heat minimizes that, and the more surface area you have, you get sort of a “strength in numbers” effect in strength. The more there is to have to fail, the less it will want to fail.

Nickel filler is preferred, but I don’t have any at the moment. This is a very low stress/non-critical part, so I’m not too concerned with failure.

 

Punch list is shrinking. Shifters are done.



Here’s the shift pattern of a D300 when you switch to a twin stick:



So the options are:
4wd high range
4wd low range
Rear only high range
Rear only low range
Front only low range
Neutral

 

I would get confused and explode it for sure.

 

If I could figure out these cutting brakes, definitely.

 

Well, I had to give up on the dream of cutting brakes. There are about four major obstacles in my way, but the biggest one is - there is just no room to put two handles to the left of the driver’s seat. Putting them between the seats is possible, but reaching over there to work brakes is not convenient when steering with your right hand and hanging out the door watching the tires and trail. Plus I really want a center console since there is no glove box. It’s a bummer, but it'll just motivate me to get a selectable rear locker at some point.

I’ll have the parking brake finished tomorrow.

 

I’m really limited in location by the length of the cables. Getting the passenger's side cable over to the driver’s side was hard enough without getting too creative with locations.

I thought about swapping out the cam actuators in the backing plates for wheel cylinders and going with hydraulic cutting brakes, but I’m not too keen on them doubling as hydraulic parking brakes.

What I’m ending up with is a nice clean parking brake setup, and who knows... I do see a possible way through this to add cutting brakes later, but I just want functioning brakes for now.

 

Pretty fun time drilling those shift levers? When I drilled Steve's it reminded me of drilling a spring.....

 

I built the ends up with weld, then ground them flat and round. It must’ve annealed any hardness, because it drilled fine.

 

This parking brake (from the Rodeo) was a pain in the butt. What it started as was close to working as it was, but just wrong enough that every piece had to be modified to some extent.

Here’s what all the brackets and linkages ended up looking like.



The cables split the cage member, and I stuck a bracket in there to keep the outer cable away from the tire.



Parking brake disengaged:



Engaged:



Now she can really slide it sideways around corners.

 

AND she has a nice collective control for when she is ready to lift off the deck.

 

I FOUND IT!!!!! Two hours of searching every box, bin, drawer, cabinet and countertop, then I decided to check outside around the scrap pile, and there it was in the mud where it’s sat for probably the last four years.

The 740 glove box latch that uses the ignition key to lock.



I’m designing my center console, and I really wanted to find this latch to design it around. I knew it was somewhere!

A day wasted, but worth it.

 

a day can never be considered a waste if you accomplish what you set out to accomplish.

or in this case, find. looking forward to end results.

 

I am starting to see a pattern here ...